Health Bill

The policy on drugs has been such an overwhelming failure until now that it is time that we had the courage to look at the issue properly, instead of being afraid of it and cringing from it. That is for another day, however. I shall happily engage in a debate on that subject with the hon. Gentleman, but not here. I would certainly want to push as far as I could the freedom of adult, informed individuals to decide what they do with their bodies, and indeed with and between each other. That is my preference. I always recoil when I have presented to me proposed legislation that seeks to impose on a large number of people the wishes of experts or politicians, because that is not why I came into politics or why I am here. Another irony is that all of us, in all political parties, pay lip service to local community decision making. I agree with that. However, when we are faced with it as a reality, we tend to recoil from it and resort to centralised decision making and imposition. My solution is that we should encourage workplace decision making of the kind that my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood mentioned. I see no reason why proprietors and work forces in offices, factories, restaurants and pubs should not be able to get together to make their own decisions about whether their premises should allow smoking, ban smoking or allow different things in different parts of the premises. Last night, I went to St. Stephen’s Tavern, right next door to us here in Westminster, to assess the effectiveness of the removal of smoke from the atmosphere. I even lit up a cigarette and puffed at it energetically to see what would happen. Everyone present in the room agreed that although people were smoking, there was no trace of cigarette smoke at all. I can see one or two hon. Friends who were also there. Instead of instinctively saying, as so many politicians do, ““We’re going to try to use the force of the law to make you good people out there do what we think is right for you””, why cannot we challenge people to take a sensible approach to the vexed subject of smoking? Why cannot we challenge proprietors to ensure that their premises are smoke-free by using the technology that is now freely available and was demonstrated to some of us last night? Why not allow that element of choice to prevail? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood said, we can use our power as consumers to try to persuade people to do what we think is right. In other words, if we find smoke offensive, we can decide not to use bars, pubs, restaurants or other premises where it is present. If sufficient of us were prepared to do that, their proprietors would have to make a decision on whether to deem them smoke-free or partly smoke-free.I see no reason why we, as consumers, as well as proprietors and members of the work force, cannot make rational choices in the workplace and in the community. That is preferable to having us here reaching for the law—as we so often instinctively, and wrongly, do—and seeking to impose our view on our citizenry and voters. I shall reluctantly support the Bill on Second Reading in the hope that we can water it down in Committee or on Report to move it towards a more truly liberal approach than the rather heavy-handed approach that it takes at the moment. I am not terribly optimistic, but I shall do my best to move it in that direction.